The Edge, by John V. Lindsay (Norton, 236 pp., $7.95). When John Lindsay, the last of the great image politicians of the Sixties, finally soft-shoed off the political stage a few years back—just a graceful buck-and-wing ahead of New York’s financial collapse—we knew we’d be hearing from him again, although perhaps not as a novelist. Predictably, Lindsay brings to the writing of fiction many of the same qualities he brought to politics—in particular, wooden language and the ability to string together an endless supply of cliches —all indicative of a paucity of original ideas. Yet despite all those quintessential Lindsayish flaws, this is a surprisingly good first novel that is sustained primarily by the central character and his wife. (Lindsay has a way with women, in real life and in fiction; in both cases this is a distinct gift.) Congressman Mike Stuart, a crusading liberal out to break up a military coup, is, like his creator, charming, likable, decent, and in many ways uncomfortably superficial. But, unpredictably, Stuart is aware of his superficiality and struggles throughout the novel to transcend it. Though he never quite succeeds, there is an honest, introspective, and even at times intelligent streak apparent in the work of his creator that many of us never saw in Lindsay before. Not a bad job at all; The Edge might even have been published had its author been named John V. Schwartz.
John R. Coyne Jr.
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